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 INSPIRATION

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INSPIRATION

they made it app:ireiit, nevertheless, that the formula, "The Bible is the Word of God ", was already about to be replaced by "The Bible contains the Word of God." Moreover, the term word was to be taken in an equivocal sense.

B. Biblical Rationalism. — In spite of all, the Bible was still held as the criterion of religious belief. To rob it of this prerogative was the work which the eigh- teenth century set itself to accomplish. In the at- tack then made on the Divine inspiration of the Scriptures three classes of assailants are to be dis- tinguished. (1) The Naturalist philosophers, who were the forerunners of modern unbelief (Holibes, Spinoza, Wolf); the English Deists (Toland, Collins, Woolston, Tindal, Morgan); the German Rationalists (Reimarus, Lessing) ; the French Encyclopedists (Vol- taire, Bayle) strove by every means, not forgetting abuse and sarcasm, to prove how absurd it was to claim a Divine origin for a book in which all the blemishes and errors of human writings are to be found. (2) The critics applied to the Bible the methods adopted for the study of profane authors. They, from the literary and historic point of view, reached the same conclusion as the infidel philos- ophers; but they thought they could remain believers by distinguishing in the Bible Ijetween the religious and the profane clement. The latter they gave up to the free judgment of historical criticism; the former they pretended to uphold, but not without restric- tions which profoundly changed its import. Ac- cording to Semler, the father of Biblical Rationalism, Christ and the Apostles accommodated themselves to the false opinions of their contemporaries; according to Kant and Eichhorn, everything which does not agree with sane reason must lie regarded as .Jewish invention. "Religion restricted within the limits of reason — that was the point which the critical movement initiated by Cirotius antl LeClerc had in common with the philosophy of Kant and the theol- ogy of Wegscheider. The dogma of plenary inspira- tion dragged down with it, in its final ruin, the very notion of revelation " (\. Sabatier, " Les religions d'au- torite et la religion de I'esprit ", 2nd ed., 1904, p. 331). (3) These philosophical historical controversies about Scriptural authority caused great anxiety in religious minds. There were many who then sought their salvation in one of the principles put forward by the earlj' Reformers, notably by Calvin: to wit, that truly Christian certitude came from the testimony of the Holy Spirit. Man had but to soimd his own soul in order to find the essence of religion, which was not a science, but a life, a sentiment. Such was the verdict of the Kantian philosophy then in vogue. It was useless, from the religious point of view, to dis- cuss the extrinsic claims of the Bible; far better was the moral experience of its intrinsic worth. The Bible itself was nothing but a history of the re- ligious experiences of the Prophets, of Christ and His Apostles, of the Synagogue and of the Church. Truth and Faith came not from without, but sprang from the Christian conscience as their source. Now this conscience was awakened and sustained by the narration of the religious experiences of those who had gone before. What mattered, then, the judg- ment passed by criticism on the historical truth of this narration, if it only evoked a salutary emotion in the soul? Here the useful alone was true. Not the te.xt, but the reader was inspired. Such, in its broad outlines, was the final stage of a movement which Spener, Wesley, the Moravian Brethren, and, generally, the Pietists initiated, but of which Schleier- maelier (17(iS-lsi;l) was to be the theologian and the pro])agator in the nineteenth century.

C. Fresent Conditions. — (1) The traditional views, however, were not abandoned without resistance. A movement back to the old idea of the theopneustia, including verbal inspiration, set in nearly everywhere

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in the first half of the nineteenth century. This reaction was called the Riveil. Among its principal promoters must be mentioned the Swiss L. Gaussen, W. Lee, in England, A.Dorner in Germany, and, more recently, W. Rohnert. Their labours at first evoked interest and .sympathy, but were destined to fail before the efforts of a counter-reaction which sought to complete the work of Sehleicrniaehcr. It was led by Alex. Vinet, Edm. Scherer, and E. Raliaud in France; Rich. Rothe and especially Ritschl in (ier- many; S. T. Coleridge, F. D. Maurice, and Matthew Arnold in England. According to them, the ancient dogma of the theopneustia is not to be reformed, but given up altogether. In the heat of the struggle, however, imiversity professors, like E. Reuss, freely used the historical method; without denying inspira- tion they ignored it.

(2) Abstracting from accidental differences, the present opinion of the so-called "progressive" Prot- estants (who profess, nevertheless, to remain suffi- ciently orthodox), as represented in Germany by B. Weiss, R. F. Cirau, and H. Cremer, in England by W. Sanday, C. Gore, and most Anglican scholars, may be reduced to the following heads; (a) the purely passive, mechanical thmpneustia, extendin^to the very words, is no longer tenable, (b) Inspiration has de- grees; suggestion, direction, elevation, and superin- tendency. All the sacred writers have not been equally inspired, (c) Inspiration is personal, that is, given directly to the sacred writer to enlighten, stimulate, and purify his faculties. This religious enthusiasm, like every great passion, exalts the powers of the soul; it belongs, therefore, to the spir- itual order, and is not merely a help given immediately to the intellect. Biblical inspiration, being a seizure of the entire man by the Divine virtue, does not differ essentially from the gift of the Holy Spirit imparted to all the faithful, (d) It is, to say the least, an improper use of language to call the sacred text itself inspired. At any rate, this text can, and actually does, err not only in profane matters, but also in those appertaining more or less to religion, since the Prophets and Christ Himself, notwithstanding His Divinity, did not possess absolute infallibility. (Cf. Denney, "A Diet, of Christ and the Gospels", I, 148—49.) The Bible is a historical document which, taken in its entirety, contains the authentic narrative of revelation, the tidings of salvation, (e) Revealed truth and, consequently, the Faith we derive from it are not founded on the Bible, but on Christ him- self; it is from Him and through Him that the written text acquires definitely all its worth. But how are we to reach the historical reality of Jesus — His teaching. His institutions — if Scripture, as well as Tradition, offers us no faithful picture? The question is a painful one. To establish the inspiration and Divine authority of the Bible the early Reformers had substituted for the teaching of the Church internal criteria, notably the interior testimony of the Holy Spirit and the spiritual efficacy of the text. Most Protestant theologians of the present day agree in declaring these criteria neither scientific nor tra- ditional; and at any rate they consider them insuffi- cient. (On the true criterion of inspiration see C.\NON OF THE HoLY SCRIPTURES.) They profess, consequently, to supplement them, if not to re- place them altogether, by a rational demonstration of the authenticity and substantial trustworthiness of the Biblical text. The new method may well provide a starting-point for the fundamental theol- ogy of Revelation, but it cannot supply a complete justification of the Canon, as it has been so far maintained in the Churches of the Reformation. Anglican theologians, too, like Gore and Sanday, gladly appeal to the dogmatic testimony of the collective conscience of the universal Church; but, in so doing, they break with one of the first prin-